Potato drills - growing the old Irish way
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- Опубликовано: 23 авг 2024
- All over Ireland the marks of this ancient style of cultivation can still be seen in the landscape. During colonisation, when indigenous families were moved of their ancestral lands, they often had to start new farms form scratch on poor soils.
One way yo build fertility quickly in mountian conditions, whether on sand, stone of peat, was to create these old fashioned drills, or lazy beds.
To plant potatoes this way you need:
* a barrow of manure or compost
* a spade for cutting through the sod
* a mattock or garden fork for lifting the sod
* seed potatoes
You start by laying out the maure in a line, before cutting the sod around it. First close to the manure, then about a spades width away.
Once the sods are cut lay your potatoes down about 15 inches apart and use the mattock or fork to turn the sod over onto the potato. This covers them and creates a trench that we will dig later to earth up the spuds as they grow.
Main crop potatoes can be planted up till the last frost, which is 15th May in my part of the world. They will be ready in about 120days, or once the flowers fall. They can be left in the ground till Christmas or harvested and stored in sacks.
#gardening
#permaculture
#organic
#potatoes
#ireland
#irishculture
#irishlife
www.expressthebest.co.uk
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Please keep use updated. I would love to see the potatoes up and growing. Also the harvesting of them would be very interesting.❤ thanks for the video!
100% Rose... I'll do a little garden tour video and I'll let you all know how this is getting on... thanks for the interest in this old Irish technique!
Hello, your video just popped up and I've loved watching it twice and then shared to my brothers! How lovely to see a real garden that looks like it could be just over the hedge from us here in Northern Ireland. We've all enjoyed seeing you plant your potatoes this way and are going to try the same caper in my garden. Thanks so much for showing this... You are a good teacher and we have all subscribed so we can see how your potatoes come on and what you get up to next. Health and mobility issues prevent me doing the kind of things I used to do but I still love my garden and want to be out there so I'm very fortunate to have kind brothers happy to help. By the way I absolutely loved the piano playing at the beginning of your video so thank you to the pianist as well! God bless you and your family and may you all have health and strength to enjoy your lovely garden. Vera ❤
Thank you so much Vera for all your lovely comments... you've really inspired me to keep going with the channel!
Aye this is just a regular front garden in Tyrone, maybe not a million miles away from where you are.
It's getting late in the year for planting potatoes, but definitely keep this technique in mind for next year...
I'll put up another video of what we are getting up to next so stay tuned!
And thank you again for your lovely message
Fascinating video. It’s amazing to think that those little white chits can make it through the tough grass to become lovely spuds. Thanks for sharing.
A wonderful video. I particularly enjoyed the calming piano music in the background. I'd be interested to see how your lovely garden changes with the seasons. Keep it up.
Thanks Mark! Hopefully it got across the way the garden makes me feel. Always seem to find peace amongst the plants.
The piano was so great! Much appreciated.
Great video!!! Just what I needed after gifted some more potatoes n no where left to plant. Time to bust sod so on with the plow so I chopped up the grass a bit to liberate the dirt and seeing as you just pretty much stripped n flipped, I'm a whole lot more confident they will sprout up throu the thick roots now. Thank you!(I never doubted the potatoe, 😋 just seein what I could get a way with and oh bonus I ploughed up an old Horseshoe 🍀)
Haha! The luck of the Irish is with you Wayne! Good man yourself.
Did you put down manure or compost first? The spud is a mighty plant but it's hungry and needs good nutrition to get the oomf to push through the sod
This is really interesting. I am in Scotland and starting a new garden from weedy turf. I'll be trying this for my tatties for sure
Thays brilliant... aye a few people from Scotland have commented to say they do this for their spuds too, so I'd say crack on... anything that works on these wee North Atlantic islands is worth sharing with each other. I hope you keep watching
Great stuff. There are so many ways of growing potatoes - but this method makes great use of the grass that grows so easily in the winter.
Thanks Patrick... aye its more labour than some methods like no dig, but it's the quickest way to start building topsoil jn places where its very poor like my sandy hill!
What is the song name being played by a pianist?
Thats me playing the piano... its a cover of "Blank Space" by Taylor Swift... I hope you enjoyed it!
This is awesome! I love seeing old ways that modern farming has left in the past. I'll be trying this!!
Class stuff John... aye the old ways are the new ways. Good luck with your experiments and let us know how ye get on
Freedom is a wonderful thing. Freedom to watch freedom not to. Individuals can only speak for themselves. Some seem to think to speak for everyone. Sign of the times? I watch many RUclips vids on growing food. I personally like a diversity of styles of presentation including your vid where I feel like I’ve stopped to smell the roses. And not a rose in sight! 😳😎✅
Thank you Glenn! I'm glad you got a good vibe from the video... of course I'm always open to feedback and I'm just getting started, but I hope to share the peaceful feeling I get from nature with everyone...
Good luck with your garden
@@earthboundireland ✅
LOL All you need is : MUSCLES Looks really cool.. I am going to show my husband this method
He might not thank you fir that Cherie!
Always love to learn new things. Thanks from NewJersey.
You're welcome... from Co. Tyrone!
Thank you for sharing this age old method with us.
Looks good
Thank you!
Lovely. Very interesting. Looking forward to see the harvest
So unfortunately there's not going to be a harvest... the manure I brought in has got weedkiller still on the straw... if never heard of it before but its called aminopyralid and its killed my spuds! In going to do a video about it as a warning to everyone! Thanks for watching though... hopefully it'll be interesting to watch what happens next
So trying this on my plot. 👍👍
Go for it Craig! Let us know how ye get on
I always grow my tatties like that,love from scotland🏴
Awesome Belinda! Half my family are Scottish originally. We are all cousins on these islands really and our ancestors shared lots of thoer culture together, including growing potatoes!
Nice to see the old ways, i'm in Scotland and our last frost is early June but the way the earth is going i'm not sure any more. I'm no till as well these days, i put all my spuds in mid April and if frost is forecast i cover with polythene.
Good idea that Kip... aye I have a bunch of spuds in already in the no dig fashion... this method helps me build organic matter in my sandy soil really quickly so I use it in the early years to get going. Then I'll transition this area to no dig and repeat on a new bit of lawn!
I notice you put the grass face down and the roots facing outwards? I presume the grass dies and adds to the fertility of the ground above the planted potatoes? I live in South Africa, weather a lot drier here, do you water the piles or do you get enough rain to take care of that chore?
Haha! So yes, we get enough rain here in Ireland! Our problem is often too much...
So yes, the grass is face down, and then later on when the potatoes have grown a bit, I'll cover them with more soil. That way the grass will die and add to the fertility as you say.
When I break the mounds apart at harvest time, I'll spead the soil flat in the space and I will have doubled up the organic matter in my sandy soil.
In the states, we call it double digging. Usually used to prep new garden areas...
Ty for teaching us I’m new to gardening❤
Amazing! Keep going... we all teach each other and there's no mistakes only lessons from the true teacher... nature herself!
Thanks for the wonderful video. Potato 🥔 growing year round here in the South in the States. Family is from County Tyrone, Cork, and my sons Dad was from Galway. I haven’t been back to Ireland in far too long.
Ach wow! Great to hear that you are so interested in your roots on this wee Island... you have the place well covered!
@@earthboundireland 🙌🏼♥️ I miss Ireland. My grandmother on mom’s side used to say things to mom when she was little when complaining about having big feet like “Nobody’ll notice on a galloping horse and that’s the kind you ride”. She died before I was born. Her father was a medical doctor named Euphrates Manning Cox he was six foot six with black hair and a handlebar mustache. Euphrates is a terror of a name. His people were from Cork. He caught tuberculosis from one of the cadavers they used at the medical school in Alabama and died otherwise he would have probably lived a long life.
I love this ❤
Thanks Yve!
I've never seen this method before (I'm in the States), and I found this very interesting. What a quick way to start a new area. I'm excited to see the harvest in a few months.
Ach thank you..
Unfortunately the manure I used was poisoned with weedkiller and so it's killed the spuds... another video is coming out soon to show what's happened and to demonstrate what to do now. My no dig spuds are coming on great so well not starve anyway! Thanks for watching
@@earthboundireland
How poetic.
great video, thank you Daniel
Thanks Sean... good man yourself for leaving the feedback
Ancient ways? Englishman Sir Walter Raleigh is credited with the introduction of potatoes to Ireland in 1589 which I think can be consider younger than ancient don't you?.
It's the digging is ancient... not the spuds. A hyperbolic rhetorical style is an ancient Gaelic characteristic going back to the myths and bards of our illustrious and distant past, and has given rise to Ireland's ability to continually punch above its weight in producing authors and thinkers through the ages... our indigenous knack of taking the English language (and potatoes!), and make them our own is one of our most endearing characteristics for which we are rightly celebrated around the world.
I wouldn't be too hasty in celebrating the English involvement in the Irish potato scene mo buachaill, as that story doesn't end well!
Thanks for watching... stay tuned for more Gaelic culture. 😉
@@earthboundireland To be sure 'Express the Best' and to split infinitives continually
To defiantly split infinitives definitely coutinues to be an infinite source of amusement in this fine yet sadly all too finite island; though you may be yet to finally grasp it, my most refined and punctillious interlocutor, there is a defined difference in our modes of being... one mode lives to love life and to be worthy of the blessings of my ancestors, which I carry in my pocket like fine sand. The other lives to argue the finer points of grammar on the Internet. I'm sorry my joyful participation in my culture triggered your animosity. I wonder why?
What do you have against us fun and freedom loving folk?
Our gardening?
Our grammar?
@@earthboundireland I misplace my fork from time to time and prod a potato.
Haha! That's the spirit. May your spuds ever prosper in your garden sir. Thank you fornyour interest and your repartee
Im Scottish on my Fathers side, but can I ask, about not about the growing technology, but more about the preparing to cook side, I dont think I would be comfortable not peeling the spuds, with all that dung around, I like the skins left on.
Good point Charles... but by the time the spuds are swelling the manure should have been composted by the worms!
@@earthboundireland Good point express, I can drop your man your contact details, and he can send you a boiling, and you can check your temperature the day after you have had a platefull. Make sure they are worm free.
Great video! I'm far too lazy to do lazy beds. :) No dig is easier on the back.
It is surely. I do the no dig as my main method... but for my ground I have to donit on raised beds since the soil is just too poor.
This way I get to build up organic matter and get some extra inches of topsoil in future years.
I'll do a wee video on my no dig spuds to compare
Thanks for watching!
Really interesting, thank you!!
Thank you Annie!
Very intersting
Thanks Grace... hopefully get a few more out
How old is that manure? Looked pretty fresh, with lots of bedding in there too.
Its full of bedding true enough but it was six months old when I got it and then two months sitting in the yard... however I've found a much worse problem! It's full of herbicide! The potatoes are dying! I'm gonna make another video to show whats happened and what to do next...
@@earthboundireland_Sigh_
We're running into this problem in the states as well.
Who in their right mind thinks its a good idea to spray a pasture or a hayfield!?
🌈💚🍀
what is the name of the song you played?
It's "Blank Space" by Taylor Swift!
Glad you are enjoying the music! Apparently if you play music to plants they enjoy it too!
Feel free to delet my comment after reading it. - I haven't watched the whole video. I am turning off now, after looking at some pots for a full minute. Its not even a great view. It feels like a giant waste of time. I dont mind watching a 45 minute video from anybody, as long as something interesting happens. Maybe some peope are more patient than me. But I dont think many people like watching some irrelevant filler footage for a full minute. Especially right at the beginning of the video. Maybe check your statistics, to see if you are not loosing quite a few viewers during that time.
Thats ok Katrin... my content might not be for you... I'm trying to provide an antidote to the frantic pace of life at the moment and the garden is a sanctuary from all the immediacy and business of the day to day world. I'm not that worried about views. You can always skip the bits you aren't interested in, or not watch the video. It's all OK with me. Good luck with your garden and may you find peace there.
@@earthboundireland That's cool then👍
I do agree, that times are crazy and that the garden can be a sanctuary😊
I wish you all the best with your RUclips channel.
Thank you! I still hope you do watch the informative bits of the video if you want to know about this method of growing... I promise the information in there after the music! 😄
Lordy!, three minutes in before any gardening took place. Im out. Gotta be a more concise vid out threre.
There definitely are! Loads of them... I am trying something different, and capture the peace and serenity that I find in being out in nature. Our ancestors had a totally different appreciation of time, everything happened in its moment. I'm trying to share some of the moments that occur spontaneously when we allow time to settle. Thanks for watching...